I always thought we were just a normal broken family. But when my grandfather died and left me a secret audio file, I found out my mother had been lying for 25 years—about my father, my siblings, and who really belonged in our family.
CHAPTER 1 – THE FAMILY WE THOUGHT WE WERE
If you’d asked me to describe my family in one word growing up, I would’ve said: complicated.
Not tragic. Not perfect. Just… a mess that somehow functioned.
We lived in a cramped two-story house in a subdivision in Laguna, the kind of place where the roads flood every time it rains, the neighbors know your business before you do, and everybody sells something from their garage.
There was my mother, Marites—though everyone called her Tess—who moved through life with the permanent tension of someone who’s always expecting bad news. She spoke in short sentences, worked long hours, and seemed allergic to questions about the past.
Then there was my sister Liana, the middle child, twenty-three and fierce, who could argue with anyone about anything and usually win. My brother Caleb, the youngest at seventeen, still in high school, still half-kid, half-man, with just enough mustache to feel proud of.
And then there was me.
I’m Elijah, twenty-seven, the oldest. The accidental third parent. The one who knew how to fix the leaking sink with tape and prayer, how to stretch a half-kilo of meat into three days’ worth of meals, and how to calm Mom down when the electricity bill arrived.
We were held together by bills, shared trauma, and a tiny, stubborn love that refused to die—even when money was gone, tempers flared, and plates slammed a little too hard on the table.
If there was one thing we didn’t have, it was a father.
Or at least that’s what Mom kept telling us.
“Your father?” she would say whenever Caleb tried to bring him up during his rebellious phases. “He left. That’s all you need to know.”
“When?” I’d once asked, years ago, when I was sixteen and still believed adults owed us explanations.
“Before you were old enough to remember,” she replied curtly. “Don’t waste time on people who don’t want you.”
After that, I stopped asking.
We grew up with a rule in that house, one no one said out loud but everyone followed:
We do not talk about our father.
We didn’t question why the picture frame on Mom’s bedside table held only us three kids and never an adult man.
We didn’t ask why Mom turned the TV off whenever a certain old 80s love song came on.
We didn’t dig through the boxes she kept locked in her wardrobe, wrapped in old newspapers and ropes.
We just lived.
Until the day Lolo Arturo died.
And the ghosts he’d been holding back came crashing into our lives.
CHAPTER 2 – THE CALL FROM THE PROVINCE
It was a Tuesday afternoon when my cousin Jona called.
I was in the jeep, heading home from my shift at the hardware store. The air was thick with sweat, exhaust fumes, and somebody’s perfume. When my phone buzzed in my pocket, I almost ignored it. But Jona rarely called.
I swiped to answer.
“Elijah,” she said, voice flat in that way people use when they’re trying not to cry. “You need to come home. To the province.”
My gut tightened.
“What happened?” I asked, though I already knew. That tone only ever meant one thing.
“It’s Lolo,” she replied. “He’s gone.”
I pressed my lips together, staring at the traffic outside. The jeep roared, but the world inside me went quiet.
“When?” I managed.
“Kanina lang. He… he had another stroke, and this time he didn’t make it. They’re bringing him home now. Tita Tess needs to be here. All of you.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll go tonight.”
The moment I stepped into our house, Mom was already pacing in the living room, wringing a dish towel in her hands.
“Who was it?” she demanded, though she already knew from my face.
I swallowed.
“Jona,” I said softly. “Ma… it’s Lolo. He passed away.”
For a second, Mom’s eyes didn’t react. Then they filled, fast and hot.
She turned away from us, her shoulders rising and falling. Liana came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands, and Caleb froze near the stairs, his school bag still slung over one shoulder.
No one said, “I’m sorry.”
We just started moving.
It’s weird how practical death is when it arrives. Tears later. First, you look for clean clothes. You calculate bus fares. You check schedules. You call your boss and ask for leave.
“Pack enough for three days,” Mom said, voice strained but controlled. “Elijah, you get the tickets. Liana, make sure we unplug all the appliances. Caleb, bring down those travel bags from the cabinet.”
“Yes, Ma,” we all murmured, suddenly children again.
That night, on the bus to Batangas, I sat by the window, watching the city lights fade into scattered house lights, then into pure darkness. Mom sat beside me, her hands knotting and unknotting the strap of her bag. Liana and Caleb were behind us, their heads leaned together, whispering.
“Ma,” I said quietly, when the bus settled into a long stretch of highway, “are you okay?”
Her jaw clenched.
“He was old,” she said. “We knew it was coming.”
But her eyes shone in the reflection of the window.
“Still,” I whispered.
She sighed, long and tired.
“Your Lolo was… many things,” she said after a while. “Stubborn. Controlling. But he looked after us when no one else did.”
There was an unsaid “especially when your father didn’t” hanging in the air.
I didn’t push. Not yet.
I had no idea that, in less than a week, I’d know more about my father and this family than I ever wanted.
CHAPTER 3 – THE USB
Lolo’s wake was held in his own house: the same old ancestral home where Mom had grown up.
Cracked walls. Wooden floors that creaked in the same spots they always had. The same faded family portraits hanging in the hallway, watching everything.
The coffin was in the living room, surrounded by plastic chairs and donated flower stands. I spent the first night doing what Filipino men are silently trained to do at wakes: man the coffee table, keep the thermos filled, and pretend jokes are funny to avoid crying.
On the second night, when the stream of visitors thinned and only close family remained, Tita Lorie pulled me aside.
“Elijah,” she whispered. “I need to talk to you. Sa kwarto ni Papa. He left something for you.”
I frowned.
“For… me?”
She nodded, her lips pressed tightly together, like she was holding back a storm.
In Lolo’s bedroom, the smell of camphor and old cologne still lingered. His rosary hung on the headboard. His slippers were right where he’d left them.
On the desk lay a small black USB drive and an envelope with my name in his messy handwriting.
To my eldest apo, Elijah.
Listen when you’re ready. – Lolo
My fingers tingled when I picked it up.
“Bakit ako?” I asked, the room suddenly too small. “Why not Mom?”
Tita Lorie hesitated.
“He made us promise,” she said. “He said… you should be the first to hear it. Then it’s up to you what to do after.”
Something in her eyes scared me.
“Tita,” I said slowly, “what is this?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know all the details,” she said. “But I know it has to do with… your family. Sa nanay mo. Sa tatay mo. That’s all I can say.”
The air felt thick.
“I don’t understand,” I murmured.
“You will,” she said. “Just… don’t listen alone. Or, if you do… be ready.”
I slipped the USB and the envelope into my pocket, my heart pounding.
That night, I lay on the mattress in the corner of the hallway where we were sleeping. Liana snored softly beside me. Caleb had passed out wearing his earphones. Mom was in the living room, sitting by the coffin, whispering prayers.
I held the USB in my hand.
Listen when you’re ready.
I wasn’t ready.
I plugged it into my cousin Jona’s old laptop anyway.
CHAPTER 4 – LOLO’S VOICE FROM THE GRAVE
The laptop fan whirred. The screen glowed. Inside the USB was only one file:
truth_for_elijah.mp3
Not subtle. Not dramatic. Just… direct.
I sighed, clicked it, and put the earphones in.
There was a crackle, like someone adjusting a microphone. Then I heard a cough, and Lolo’s voice filled my ears.
“Testing… testing… is this thing on? Ah.”
He sounded weaker than I remembered, but still him.
“Elijah,” he began, and my chest tightened just hearing my name.
“If you are listening to this, it means I am already with the Lord. Or… in purgatory, if your Lola is right.” He chuckled dryly, then his tone shifted.
“I asked them to give this only to you. Not to your mother. Not to your tita. You.”
I swallowed.
“Of all my apos,” he continued, “you are the one who… thinks too much. You ask questions in your head even when your mouth is quiet. You look like your mother, but sometimes, you look like him too.”
Him.
The word hung heavy.
“I have carried a secret for a long time,” Lolo said slowly. “I kept it because I thought it would protect your family. But now that I’m gone, I cannot bring it to the grave. That would be another sin.”
I realized my hands were shaking.
“Elijah,” he said, “you deserve to know the truth about your father. About all of you.”
There it was.
I paused the audio, suddenly short of breath.
In the dim light of the hallway, Liana shifted, Caleb mumbled in his sleep. I could hear distant murmurs from the living room, the clink of coffee cups.
I could stop. I could eject the USB, throw it away, pretend this never happened.
But something in me—something tired of living in half-truths—hit play again.
CHAPTER 5 – THE FIRST REVELATION
“I will start from the beginning,” Lolo said.
“Your mother, Tess, was… wild when she was young. Beautiful, stubborn, always arguing with me. She thought I was too strict. I thought she was too free.”
He coughed again, the sound of old lungs struggling.
“When she was nineteen, she fell in love with a man named Genaro Cruz. You never heard his name from her—because I forbid it in this house. He was… trouble. Drank too much. Gambled. But he knew how to make a girl feel like she were the only one in the world. Your mother was no exception.”
My stomach twisted.
“She got pregnant,” Lolo said bluntly. “That baby… was you.”
I exhaled sharply, my mind spinning.
“Your mother wanted to marry him,” he went on. “Sabi niya, ‘Papa, mahal ko siya. Kahit mahirap kami, kakayanin namin.’ But I knew his kind. I’d seen that face before. Charming when sober, dangerous when drunk. I said no. I told her, ‘If you marry that man, you are no longer my daughter.’”
There was a pause, like he was wrestling with the memory.
“She left,” he said softly. “Packed her things and left this house while shouting she would never come back. For months, I didn’t see her. I imagined her living in some shanty with Genaro, eating sardines, holding a newborn baby.”
Another deep breath.
“But it didn’t last. One night, she showed up at the door, carrying you in her arms, thin as paper, cheeks wet with tears.”
I could almost see it in my head—Mom, younger, desperate, holding Baby Me.
“She didn’t need to say what happened,” Lolo continued. “Genaro did not stand by her. He left. For another woman, for another debt, for another drink—I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I was just… relieved that she came home.”
I felt anger, even though this had happened decades before I existed as anything other than a screaming newborn.
“So yes, Elijah,” Lolo said quietly. “Your mother did not lie when she said, ‘Your father left.’ He did. But that is not the whole truth.”
His voice dropped lower.
“The whole truth is: I made sure he never came back.”
My breath hitched.
“One day, when you were almost two, Genaro came to this house,” Lolo said slowly. “Drunk, smelling of cigarettes, shouting Tess’s name at the gate. He wanted money. He wanted her back. He wanted to see you. He said… you were his son and he had rights.”
Silence crackled.
“I went out with my bolo still wet from cutting banana trunks,” Lolo said. “I told him, ‘You have no rights here. My grandson will not grow up with a man like you.’ He laughed. Called me an arrogant old man. Said he would take you and Tess by force if he wanted.”
The next words were quieter.
“I lost control,” Lolo whispered. “I told him if he ever came back, I would kill him. Maybe he saw in my eyes that I meant it. Maybe he just got bored. But he never came back. I heard, years later, that he got into a brawl in another province. Dead in a ditch.”
So that was my father.
A name that never lived past my childhood, a ghost that Mom refused to talk about, a man turned into a cautionary tale in Lolo’s mind.
“Elijah,” Lolo said, “I didn’t tell you who your father was—not to protect him. But to protect you. I was afraid if you found him, or his family, they would drag you down. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was right. I don’t know.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until a tear dropped onto the laptop’s touchpad.
But Lolo’s recording wasn’t done.
CHAPTER 6 – THE SECOND AND THIRD FATHERS
“You are not the only secret,” Lolo said, his voice firmer again, almost resigned.
“There is more.”
I sat up straighter, wiping my face.
“After Genaro,” Lolo continued, “your mother changed. She hardened. But the world did not become kinder because she did. Life went on. And then… came Liana.”
I flinched hearing my sister’s name.
“This time, the man was not a drunk,” he said. “He was an officer. A policeman assigned to the nearby town. His name was Randy. He was smooth, respectable, with a crisp uniform and a sweet mouth.”
Lolo sighed.
“I didn’t like him either,” he admitted. “But I saw how he treated Tess—gentler, more careful. For a while I thought, maybe this is her second chance. Maybe she will have the life she was denied the first time.”
I touched the sleeping shape of Liana beside me lightly, as if checking she was still real.
“But Randy had secrets of his own,” Lolo went on. “One day, his wife showed up here. Yes, wife. He was married the whole time. She found out about your mother, about the baby in her belly, and she came with rage in her eyes.”
My teeth clenched.
“There was shouting,” Lolo said, almost whispering now. “Crying. Slaps. My house has heard many ugly things, but that day… I thought it would fall down from shame.”
My fists curled.
“In the end, Randy stayed with his legal family,” Lolo continued. “Your mother was left again. But she refused to abort. She said, ‘It’s not the child’s fault.’ So we kept her. We kept Liana. And I told your mother, ‘This time, we will not even mention his name. This child will not chase a father who chose another family.’”
So my sister’s father was not just absent; he was a betrayal Mom carried in her bones.
“And then,” Lolo said heavily, “came Caleb.”
I almost laughed bitterly. Why not? We were already halfway through the worst family history lesson ever.
“By then, your mother was older,” he said. “Tired. We thought she had learned. But… loneliness is a cruel thing, Elijah. And men can smell it.”
“This one was… a businessman. Or that’s what he called himself. He was charming, generous, always with small gifts. He made your mother feel beautiful when she had forgotten how. She got pregnant again.”
Caleb snored softly behind me, oblivious to the story of his own conception.
“Only this time,” Lolo said, “the man didn’t even pretend he was single. He confessed from the start: he had a wife abroad, older children, a life he couldn’t leave. He said, ‘I cannot give you my name, but I will support the child.’”
Did he? I wondered.
“For a while, he sent money,” Lolo said, as if hearing my thought. “Then the deposits grew smaller. Then stopped. Last we heard, he’d migrated completely. New country, new life. New set of lies.”
I leaned my head back against the wall, staring at the dark ceiling.
“So yes, Elijah,” Lolo said. “You three do not share the same father. You share the same mother. The same house. The same pain. But different men are responsible for your blood.”
He paused, and in that pause, I could hear his labored breathing, the weight of the years.
“I am not telling you this to hurt you,” he said. “I am telling you because… you are the eldest. You deserve to know the truth of what you were born into.”
I thought of all the times Liana joked, “We don’t look alike, no? Maybe I was swapped at birth.”
Of all the times Caleb said, “Why is my skin darker? Am I adopted?”
Of all the times I answered, “Shut up, you idiots, we’re siblings,” just to make them laugh.
And now here we were.
Not not-siblings. But not exactly what we thought either.
CHAPTER 7 – LOLO’S CONFESSION
The audio clicked faintly, like he had shifted in his chair.
“There is one more thing,” Lolo said, voice softer. “About your mother.”
My heart tightened again.
“Tess is not a saint,” he said bluntly. “She has made choices I shouted at her about. She has lied. She has hidden things. She has hurt people. But she also did what she thought she had to do to keep you three together.”
“You must understand, Elijah,” he continued. “In this country, a woman with three children from three different men is… judged, spit on, called names. She knew that. She carried it anyway.”
I could picture Mom’s face when neighbors whispered, when relatives made “jokes” that weren’t funny.
“And so she decided on a story,” Lolo said. “A simple one. Easy to repeat. Easy to defend.”
“Your father left.”
“One villain. One wound. Easier than three separate betrayals.”
He inhaled sharply, coughed, winced.
“I went along with it,” he admitted. “For years, I watched you children ask questions and be shut down. I watched your mother’s eyes when you did—it was like seeing an animal in a trap. So I stayed silent. I told myself I was protecting you. That you didn’t need to know.”
His voice broke a little.
“But then… I watched you grow, Elijah. I saw how you looked at families with complete parents. How you studied the faces of older men, wondering if you had their nose, their eyes. I saw how you tried to be father, brother, son all at once.
And I realized: the silence was crushing you.”
I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am sorry I let my pride and fear turn into a wall between you and the truth. I don’t know if telling you now will fix anything. But I hope… maybe, when I’m gone, it will help you understand your mother.”
There was a long, long pause.
Then:
“Tell her I’m sorry too. For a lot of things.
And Elijah… whatever you decide to do with this truth—remember this:
Blood is not the only thing that makes a family.
Sometimes, it’s who stays, not who made you.”
The recording clicked to an end.
I pulled out the earphones and stared at the sleeping forms of my siblings.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to laugh hysterically.
I wanted to throw the laptop against the wall.
Instead, I did nothing.
I just sat there and realized that everything I thought I knew about us was both a lie and still true.
We weren’t what we thought we were.
But we were still… us.
And now I had to decide whether to keep this secret, like my mother and grandfather had, or tear our fragile peace apart with it.
CHAPTER 8 – BREAKING THE RULE
I didn’t sleep that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw images:
A faceless man named Genaro shouting at a metal gate.
A policeman’s wife throwing plates while my mother sobbed.
A businessman boarding a plane with a new family waiting on the other side.
Alongside them, I saw my mother’s back as she washed dishes, the curve of Liana’s shoulder as she argued with YouTube commentators, Caleb’s messy handwriting on his notebooks.
In the morning, the sun hit the coffin and made it shine.
Wakes are strange like that—grief and gossip, card games and crying, coffee and candles.
By the time the funeral procession walked Lolo to the cemetery and lowered him into the ground, my head felt like it was packed with stones.
After the burial, the family gathered in the house for the traditional meal. While the older relatives discussed practical matters—debts, land, who would take care of which plants—Mom slipped away to Lolo’s bedroom.
I followed her.
She was standing by the window when I entered, staring at the backyard. The mattress was still dented where Lolo used to lie.
“Ma,” I said softly.
She didn’t turn around.
“Hmm?” she murmured.
“He left something for me,” I said. “A USB. With… with a message.”
Her shoulders stiffened.
“Oh,” she said. Just that.
“He talked about you,” I continued. “About… us. About our fathers.”
Silence stretched between us like a rope.
“I see,” she finally replied, voice flat. “And what did he say? That I was stupid? Mapanligaw? A disgrace?”
It was my turn to feel stunned.
“He… he blamed himself more than you,” I said honestly. “He said he was sorry.”
“Sorry is cheap,” she snapped.
She turned then, and I saw something raw in her eyes—a mix of anger, fear, and something like shame.
“Ma,” I said, “is it true?”
“You heard it straight from him,” she shot back. “Why ask me?”
“Because I want to hear it from you,” I replied, my own frustration bubbling up. “All my life, you made a rule: we don’t talk about Dad. Every time we asked, you shut us down. Now I find out there wasn’t one Dad. There were three men. Three stories. And you carried them alone.”
I gestured wildly, the words spilling out faster as the dam broke.
“Do you know how that feels, Ma? To grow up in the dark? To have people ask, ‘Where’s your father?’ and not know what to say? I made up stories in my head just to cope. Now I find out there was a whole other reality I was never given a chance to know.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, looked away.
“I was protecting you,” she said quietly. “You think it’s easy, raising three children from three different men? The names they would call me? The way they would look at you? It was simpler to say: ‘Your father left.’ One villain. One wound. Easier to live with.”
“For who?” I demanded. “For us? Or for you?”
Her eyes flashed.
“For all of us!” she snapped. “You think I liked lying? Every night I asked God to forgive me. Every time you boys asked why you looked different, why you had different temperaments, I wanted to tell you. But what then? You’d go looking for them? For a drunk? A cheater? A coward?”
Her chest rose and fell rapidly.
“I made mistakes, Elijah,” she said, shaking. “Many. But the one thing I promised myself was this: I would keep you three together. No matter what. No one would take you from me. Not a man, not his legal wife, not his new family. This—” she pointed at the house, the air, “—this messy, imperfect life… was all I could give.”
I swallowed back my anger, because beneath it, there was something else: sorrow.
“Ma,” I said, softer now, “you didn’t have to do it alone. You had us.”
“You were children,” she retorted. “You still are, even now, in some ways. Children shouldn’t have to carry their parents’ sins. That’s my cross.”
I stepped closer.
“Not anymore,” I said. “You don’t have to carry it alone anymore. I know now. And… they should know too.”
Her eyes widened.
“No,” she said immediately. “Elijah, no. Don’t tell them. Don’t tell Liana. Don’t tell Caleb. Let them keep their simple story.”
“They’re not children anymore,” I said. “Liana’s an adult. Caleb is practically one. Don’t you think they deserve a chance to know who they are fully?”
She was shaking her head, over and over.
“You’ll break them,” she whispered. “You’ll make them hate me.”
I felt something crack inside me at that.
“Ma,” I said, my own voice breaking now, “I already know the worst. And I don’t hate you.”
She looked at me like she didn’t believe it.
“I’m angry,” I admitted. “Confused. Hurt. But I look at you and I see… someone who was also hurt. Who had no one to guide her. Who did the best she could with bad options.”
Tears finally spilled down her cheeks.
“I don’t know if they’ll react like me,” I continued. “Maybe they’ll shout. Maybe they’ll cry. Maybe they won’t talk to you for a while. But at least… they’ll be angry at the truth—not at a fog they can’t name.”
She sank onto the edge of the bed, her knees giving out.
“Your Lolo should have kept his mouth shut,” she muttered weakly.
I sat beside her.
“He thought he was doing the right thing,” I said. “Same as you. Maybe now… it’s my turn to make a choice.”
She looked at me, tired, defeated.
“And what do you choose, Elijah?” she asked. “Do you choose peace or truth?”
I looked at my hands.
“I choose both,” I said quietly. “No more lies. But no more running, either. We face it together, or not at all.”
She let out a hollow laugh.
“You sound like your Lolo,” she murmured.
Then, after a long pause:
“Okay,” she whispered. “Tell them. If you must. But let me be there when you do.”
CHAPTER 9 – TELLING THEM
We didn’t do it in the province.
There were too many eyes, too many ears, too many relatives who would turn a personal revelation into a community drama.
We waited until we were back in Laguna, in our cramped house where everything began and would likely end.
It was a Sunday evening. The neighbors’ karaoke machine was mercifully silent for once. The fan was humming in the living room, blowing humid air.
Mom sat in her usual chair. I sat on the floor. Liana sprawled on the couch, scrolling through her phone. Caleb was at the dining table, pretending to study but mostly doodling.
“Can you two come here for a bit?” I said, my voice shaky.
Liana raised an eyebrow.
“If this is about another family meeting about bills, I swear—”
“It’s not about bills,” I said. “It’s about… us.”
That got their attention.
They joined us in the living room, Caleb with his notebook still in hand.
Mom cleared her throat.
“What your kuya is about to tell you,” she began, “may hurt. But… I agreed to it. Because I am tired of hiding.”
Liana sat up slowly. Caleb frowned.
“Okay, now I’m scared,” he muttered.
I took a deep breath.
“When we were at Lolo’s wake,” I said, “Tita gave me something. A USB. It had a recording. From Lolo. It was… about our family. About our fathers.”
The word hung there.
“Our father,” Caleb corrected automatically, then stopped. “Wait. Fathers?”
I nodded.
“Lolo told me,” I said gently, “that we don’t all share the same one.”
Liana’s face tightened. Caleb blinked rapidly.
“What do you mean?” Liana asked, her tone sharp but not yet angry. “Like… half-sibling kind of thing?”
“Yes,” I said. “Technically.”
Caleb scoffed weakly.
“Technically?” he repeated. “Like, what—one-third, one-fourth?”
I smiled sadly.
“More like… one out of three,” I said. “Lolo said… we each have a different father.”
Silence.
Liana laughed once, disbelieving.
“That’s a messed-up joke, Eli,” she said. “Seriously. Don’t.”
“It’s not a joke,” Mom said quietly.
We all turned to her.
“It’s true,” she continued, her voice trembling. “You each came from different men. Men I thought—at the time—could give me love. Security. A future. I was wrong. But I never… I never regretted having any of you.”
She looked at each of us, her eyes wet.
“Elijah,” I said, “is the son of a man named Genaro Cruz. He left when I was pregnant. Lolo drove him away for good.”
Liana’s jaw dropped.
“You told us he left all of us,” she said, her voice rising. “All this time I thought we had the same heartbreak.”
“You had heartbreak,” Mom replied. “Just… a different man caused it.”
“And me?” Liana demanded, her eyes blazing. “Who cursed my genetics?”
Mom inhaled shakily.
“A policeman,” she said. “He was married. I didn’t know at first. When I found out, it was too late. You were inside me. His wife came here. It was… ugly. He stayed with his legal family. Lolo told me never to mention his name again. I obeyed.”
Liana laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“So I’m the product of an affair,” she said. “Great.”
She looked at me, then at Caleb.
“And you?” she asked Caleb. “Who’s your mystery dad?”
Mom swallowed hard.
“A businessman,” she replied. “At least, that’s what he called himself. He was honest that he was married and living abroad. He promised to help. He did, for a while. Then he disappeared. Last I heard, he migrated with his official family.”
Caleb stared at the floor, his knuckles white around his pen.
“So we’re like some… bargain-bin soap opera,” he said bitterly. “Different seasons, same plot: guy leaves, Mom stays, Lolo fumes.”
“No,” I said quietly. “We’re more than that.”
Liana’s eyes flashed toward me.
“How long have you known?” she snapped.
“Since the wake,” I said.
“And you didn’t tell us right away?” she shot back.
“I was trying to figure out how,” I replied. “And if I should at all.”
Caleb looked up, his eyes glossy.
“So… it’s all true,” he said. “We’re not… full siblings.”
Mom leaned forward.
“You are siblings,” she said fiercely. “Full in every way that matters. Same roof. Same hunger. Same laughter. Same pain. You grew up together. You fought and made up over the same stupid things. Blood isn’t just about who made you. It’s about who stayed.”
Liana shook her head slowly.
“I don’t know how to feel,” she said. “I want to be angry. I also weirdly don’t… care? I mean, I always wondered why Eli looks more like Lolo. Why Caleb’s skin is darker. Why I have these weird curly strands no one else has.”
She ran a hand through her hair.
“It explains a lot,” she admitted. “But also… why didn’t you trust us with this? Did you think we’d leave you too if we knew?”
Mom covered her face with her hands.
“I thought you would look at me and see only my mistakes,” she whispered. “Not the nights I worked overtime, not the times I skipped meals so you could eat. Only… the men I chose.”
“Ma,” I said, my voice gentle, “we see all of it. The good and the bad. And we’re still here.”
Caleb let out a shaky breath.
“So what now?” he asked. “Are we supposed to go… look for them? Add them on Facebook? ‘Hi, I’m your secret kid, please react heart.’”
I snorted despite myself.
“That’s up to each of us,” I said. “Lolo didn’t tell me so we could hunt them down. He told me so we could stop living in a lie. So we could understand why things were the way they were. Why Mom was always afraid someone would take us away.”
Liana chewed her lip, her eyes thoughtful now instead of furious.
“I don’t know if I want to know him,” she said. “I mean, that cop. He knew he was married and still slept with you. He knew Mom was carrying me and still went home to his legal wife. What’s there to learn?”
“That he’s human,” I said. “Flawed. Weak. Like all of us.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t need another weak man in my life,” she muttered.
Caleb sighed.
“I used to fantasize about this cool, distant father,” he admitted. “Like an OFW who would come home with pasalubong and pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘Son, I’m proud of you.’ Turns out, he just… left.”
His voice cracked.
“But I had you, Kuya,” he added, choking up. “And Ma. And Ate. Maybe that’s enough.”
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Then Liana crawled off the couch and sat on the floor beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder.
“It is enough,” she said quietly. “It sucks. But it’s enough.”
Mom started sobbing then—big, ugly, releasing sobs she’d been holding in for decades. I knelt by her and held her, my own tears finally overflowing.
“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“We know,” I whispered. “We know.”
And for the first time in our lives, we weren’t just four people eating at the same table with unspoken gaps between us.
We were a family looking at the crack right in the center—and choosing, together, not to let it split us apart.
CHAPTER 10 – WHAT WE CHOSE
A month passed.
People think big revelations change everything overnight. They don’t. They just quietly rearrange how you see things.
We still fought about dishes. Still argued about Wi-Fi usage. Still worried about money.
But now, when someone asked, “So, where’s your dad?” the answer in my head was clearer:
Dead in a ditch somewhere, chased by his own demons.
I didn’t always say it out loud. Sometimes I still said, “He’s gone.” Sometimes I said, “It’s complicated.” But the difference was: I knew what complicated meant now.
Liana went through a phase where she googled “children of affairs support group” and “how to forgive a parent for lying.” She journaled a lot. Then one night, she knocked on Mom’s door and they talked for three hours. I don’t know what was said, but the next day, Liana cooked sinigang—Mom’s favorite—for the first time ever.
Caleb changed his surname on Facebook to a hyphenated version with Mom’s maiden name. When I asked why, he said, “Feels more honest. Feels more mine.”
“Do you want to find him?” I asked once, referring to his biological father.
He shrugged.
“Maybe someday,” he said. “If it won’t hurt you guys. If I’m ready. But for now… I’m okay knowing he exists and knowing he chose something else. I choose this.”
He pointed around the house.
Mom seemed lighter in strange ways. Still stressed, still tired, still laser-focused on paying bills—but sometimes I’d catch her staring at us with a soft expression, like she couldn’t believe we were still there.
One evening, as we sat in front of the house, watching kids play on the street, she nudged me.
“You’re still angry?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Less every day.”
She nodded.
“Me too,” she said.
I frowned.
“At who?” I asked.
She thought for a second.
“At myself. At the men. At my own father,” she said. “And… at God, a little bit.”
I smiled sadly.
“That’s a lot of people to be angry at,” I said.
“I had twenty years of practice,” she replied dryly.
We sat in silence for a while.
“Elijah,” she said softly, “you know… when I was your age, I was still figuring out how to survive. No one told me what you should and shouldn’t accept from a man. No one told me I could leave before it got worse. I thought… this is love, this is what it looks like. Hard, painful, humiliating. Now I know better. I wish I had known sooner.”
I looked at her, at the lines on her face.
“Well,” I said, “because you went through that, Liana and Caleb and I know better. You ended the cycle. Even if it cost you a lot.”
She blinked rapidly.
“You really don’t hate me?” she asked again.
I shook my head.
“I don’t hate you,” I said. “I know what you did wrong. But I also know you stayed. You didn’t run. That counts for something.”
She smiled for real then—a small, tired, genuine smile.
“Your Lolo would be proud of you,” she said. “For listening. And for… choosing to tell them.”
“I hope he’s resting easy,” I replied. “He carried this for too long.”
We both looked up at the sky, at the faint stars barely visible through the city haze.
“Ma,” I said, “if you could go back and change anything… would you?”
She thought for a long time.
“Maybe my taste in men,” she said finally, and we both laughed. “But you three? No. Never. Even if I had known how hard it would be, I would still choose to have you. Maybe… I would just be braver with the truth earlier.”
I nodded.
“I’ll try to be that,” I said. “Braver with the truth, for my future kids. So they won’t need a USB from a grave to know who they are.”
She placed her hand over mine.
“That’s all I can ask,” she whispered.
CHAPTER 11 – THE REAL HOOK
Sometimes, when I’m bored, I scroll through YouTube and see titles like:
“He Found Out His Dad Had Another Family—What Happened Next Will Shock You!”
“She Lived A Lie For 30 Years—Then This Recording Changed Everything!”
I laugh, because if my life had a clickbait title, it would probably be:
“He Thought He Came From One Broken Man—Then His Grandfather’s Secret Audio Revealed Three.”
But here’s the thing:
The shocking part isn’t the number of fathers.
It’s this:
That after the lies, after the secrets, after the shame…
we stayed.
We chose to remain a family.
Not because it was easy, or because the truth didn’t hurt—but because underneath all the mess, there was something worth holding on to.
People like to say, “Blood is thicker than water.”
Lolo was right in his recording, though:
Sometimes, it isn’t blood that makes a family.
It’s who shows up at the wake.
Who packs the bags when there’s a funeral.
Who shares the last piece of fried chicken without being asked.
Who sits with you in the living room while you confess the worst things you’ve ever done—and doesn’t walk out.
In our case, it wasn’t our fathers.
It was us.
Me.
My mother.
My sister.
My brother.
A family born out of mistakes, held together by stubborn love, and finally freed by a dead man’s voice from a tiny black USB.
And if you ask me now who I am, I won’t start with my father’s name.
I’ll start with this:
“I’m Elijah.
My grandfather finally told me the truth.
It hurt.
It healed.
And it gave me the chance to build a future that doesn’t have to repeat the past.”
